Where those associated with Western films from around the world are laid to rest.

Saturday, July 11, 2015

RIP Roger Rees

RIP Roger Rees

Playbill

By Robert Simonson

July 11, 2015

Roger Rees, the Welsh actor who rocketed to fame as the
title character in The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby, a sprawling
stage adaptation of an obscure novel by Charles Dickens, died July 10. He was
71. He worked virtually to the last weeks of his life, appearing in the
Broadway musical The Visit until forced to withdraw due to his declining
health.

Nicholas Nickleby
was unlike anything else ever seen on the London or New York stages when it
arrived in the early 1980s. David Edgar adapted Dickens’ 1839 tale of the
fortune-tossed, but loyal and good-hearted Nicholas who, after losing his
father, must struggle to support his mother and sister, all without the help of
his uncle Ralph, a heartless businessman.

John Caird and
Trevor Nunn co-directed the piece, which was performed in two parts, each four
hours in length, for which audiences had to buy two separate tickets. An
unlikely prospect to become a hot ticket, the show became a critical and
popular sensation after it opened at the Aldrich Theatre in 1980. It arguably
inaugurated an era of marathon theatre spectacles which continues to this day.

In 1981, Nickleby
played Broadway for a limited run, and proved popular again. It won the Tony
Award for Best Play, and Mr. Rees won for Best Actor in a Play. The play aired
on television in 1983, earning the actor his sole Emmy nomination.

Roger Rees was in
his mid-30s when he landed what would become the role of his lifetime, and it
propelled his career into high gear. He appeared as a movie version of the film
director Peter Bogdanovich in Bob Fosse’s final film "Star 80," about
the tragic life and death of Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten. He starred in
the British sitcom "Singles" from 1988 to 1991. In the States, he was
highly visible as Robin Colcord, the wealthy and devious love interest of
Kirstie Alley’s Rebecca Howe on "Cheers." Mr. Rees became a U.S.
citizen in 1989.

He was born May 5,
1944 in Aberystwyth, Wales, and grew up in south London. "I was at a
pretty rough school, and the only thing I was good at was art," he told
Playbill in 2013. "I got out of this school and went to Camberwell College
of Arts, a terribly prestigious thing to do. I was there to be a painter. And I
sketched so well that a year later I was sent to Slade School of Fine Art, one
of the great art schools." He changed focus when, while painting scenery
at Wimbledon Theatre, he was asked to fill a part in a play. "And I
suddenly was an actor. I played the lead. I don't remember being nervous. I
learned to be nervous later."

He continued his
stage career in the Royal Shakespeare Company, beginning in 1967. There he
appeared in The Comedy of Errors, Three Sisters, The Merchant of Venice,
Othello, Twelfth Night and Cymbeline, primarily portraying, in his own words,
“an eccentric comic character.” An association with playwright Tom Stoppard
began when he acted as Henry in the original London production of The Real
Thing in 1982. He also acted in the premiere of Stoppard’s Hapgood, playing a
Russian double agent.

It wasn’t until
the early '90s that he returned to Broadway, first in the ill-fated musical The
Red Shoes, then in a star-studded 1995 production of Cocteau’s romantic comedy
Indiscretions (Kathleen Turner, Eileen Atkins, Cynthia Nixon and a young Jude
Law were in the cast), that got mixed reviews, but netted Mr. Rees a Tony
nomination. He then appeared in a revival of Anouilh’s The Rehearsal at the
Roundabout Theatre Company and a 2000 staging of Uncle Vanya, starring as Dr.
Astrov opposite Derek Jabobi’s Vanya.

Off-Broadway, he
won an Obie in Award in 1992 for his portrayal of a cynical, narcissistic
British doctor in Jon Robin Baitz’s The End of the Day. The role was
well-suited to the handsome, dark-haired Rees’ particular strengths in
portraying morally compromised figures (or just plain rotters) with intellect,
wit, dash and charm. "Rarely has a complete lack of integrity been played
with so much integrity, or so entertainingly," The New York Times wrote of
him.

In 2002 at Lincoln
Center Theater he found one of his most significant and unusual parts in the
musical A Man of No Importance, based on the movie of the same name. He
portrayed a closeted Dublin bus conductor who admires the works of Oscar Wilde.

In the latter part
of his theatre career, Mr. Rees spent more time directing and writing. He
directed Lynn Nottage’s Mud, River, Stone at Playwrights Horizons in 1997, and
an Off-Broadway revival of Arms and the Man in 2000. In 2004, he was named
artistic director of the famed Williamstown Theatre Festival, only the fourth
person to hold the post in its half century history, and the first
non-American. However, his reign was short. He left the position in October
2007.

Mr. Rees and his
husband, the writer Rick Elice, collaborated on Peter and the Starcatcher, a
play based on a novel by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson, adapted by Elice, and
co-directed by Rees and Alex Timbers. The show, a sort of prequel to J.M.
Barrie’s Peter and Wendy, traveled from La Jolla Playhouse to Off-Broadway and
then to Broadway in 2012. It was a surprise success, running nearly a year and
earning several Tony Award nominations, including one for Rees and Timbers. The
next year, Mr. Rees essayed what many critics thought his best stage
performance in years, as a father who tries to right a wrong against his young
son––to the eventual ruin on his family and health––in a revival of Terence
Rattigan’s The Winslow Boy.

Other film roles
included Mel Brooks’ "Robin Hood: Men in Tights," "Frida"
and "The Prestige." In the '00s, he played Lord John Marbury, the
UK’s Ambassador to the United States in TV's "The West Wing."

His final stage
role was as Anton Schell, the doomed former lover of a vengeful millionairess
in John Kander and Fred Ebb’s dark musical The Visit. He appeared in the show
on Broadway in spring 2015 but had to bow out due to health reasons before the
show closed.

About Me

Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1946 I have a BA degree in American History from Cal St. Northridge. I've been researching the American West and western films since the early 1980s and visiting filming sites in Spain and the U.S.A. Elected a member of the Spaghetti Western Hall of Fame 2010.